We find perfect Christian balance in Jesus Christ himself. We are complete in Him, because in Him all fulness dwells (Col 2:9-10). In Jesus we are holy. In Him we will be holy and live holy. We will be changed and different. We will obey His Word. We won’t be ruled by the flesh any more. But we also are free. We are free from the religion of human achievement. We don’t attain spirituality by keeping lists of rules. With live righteous lives in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.
A group of false teachers in the Colossae region went around making people feel guilty because they didn’t keep a list of rules not found in Scripture. To them, even if you had received Christ, you weren’t saved if you didn’t keep their pet menu of rituals and regulations and routines. External standards are always tempting. Unconverted phonies can conform to them, so they don’t provide a suitable basis to judge someone’s conversion. Salvation is by grace through faith, but spiritual bullies desire to coerce others into their own criteria for spirituality, causing confusion and doubt to a church.
So Paul tells these churches at Colossae and Laodecia not to restrict themselves solely because of these false teachers that want them to cramp their lifestyles to earn their way to righteousness (v. 16). This contradicted the sufficiency they had in Christ (vv. 9, 10). He wasn’t, by the way, saying to them that they could do whatever they wanted. Colossians 2 isn’t the only passage in the Bible on liberty. There are huge chunks of text on this in Romans, 1 Corinthians, and Galatians as well. For instance, he wasn’t requiring them to jump through the salvation hoops of the Essenes, but in other passages he does tell the church to look out for the welfare of the weaker brother. They didn’t have liberty to sin, to be worldly, to be a stumbling block, to be a bad testimony, to let their good be evil spoken of, to disobey church leadership, or to cause disunity in the church. But he didn’t want them to be bullied by the onerous self-serving dicta of genuine legalists.
Non-Christians and Christians alike often give the same answer to difficult questions like these: Why did God allow sin in the first place? Why does God save some people and not others? Why does God send people to hell? Why can living like a Christian be so frustrating? The immediate solution often suggested is simple: “free will.” To many people, it’s a satisfying answer: “Oh, that makes sense. Yeah, God does x because he has to preserve my free will. Yeah, OK. Next question.” I’d like to suggest that we re-think this important issue.
“Free-will doctrine – what does it? It magnifies man into God; it declares God’s purposes a nullity, since they cannot be carried out unless men are willing. It makes God’s will a waiting servant to the will of man, and the whole covenant of grace dependent upon human action. Denying election on the ground of injustice it holds God to be a debtor to sinners so that if He gives grace to one He is bound to do so to all. It teaches that the blood of Christ was shed equally for all men and since some are lost, this doctrine ascribes the difference to man’s own will, thus making the atonement itself a powerless thing until the will of man gives it efficacy. Those sentiments dilute the scriptural description of man’s depravity, and by imputing strength to fallen humanity, rob the Spirit of the glory of His effectual grace: this theory says in effect that it is of him that willeth, and of him that runneth, and not of God that showeth mercy.”